Step 11: The Perch continued

Step 2: Dying yarn

A Black-capped Chickadee's torso is grey on the back, rusty brown on the bottom and sides lightening to white below the neck. I wanted a gradual change in colour so that it would look more natural but I didn't want to have to change colours every couple of stitches. To that end I dyed a portion of the off-white coloured yarn with coffee. For this to work, you would need to use wool or cotton yarn, mine was cotton and it worked fine.

First what I did was to determine how much yarn I would need to dye, to do so I crocheted part of the body and then unravelled it to measure the length, it was ~8ft or 240cm. I followed iamkeebler's intructable on how to dye yarn with coffee. First soaking it for a half and hour in diluted vinegar, then brewing some really strong coffee and soaking the yarn in it. I wanted to produce a colour gradient in my yarn so I pulled a bit of the yarn out of the dye every couple of hours or so (I didn't wake up in the middle of the night to do this though). On the next day I rinsed the yarn gently with soap and water and hung it up to dry.

Congratulations on being a finalist in the fiber arts contest!! Good luck to you! I'm so excited this is in the finals, I voted for you, I can't crochet...wish I could but I can't..but I so appreciate the work it takes and this turned out so so lovely!

Thanks! Crocheting is a lot of fun and easy to pick up, you should give it a try if you have the time (of course that is the hard part -finding the time, there are a lot of things I would like to learn if I only had the time).

Voted !!Good Luck.

Thanks!

That is adorable! I miss hearing Chickadees all the time :)

I didn't realize you don't get Chickadees in California, how sad.

Well, they might be out here. But it's not the same as living in the country in Minnesota. My grandma would sing back to the chickadees. Chickadee-dee-dee-dee :)

Cute, clever and I loved seeing your cat on the video jump up on the table to investigate. :)

Thanks! I was going to re-do the video because I have the TV on in the background but I don't know if my cat would do that again.

How adorable!!

This is amazing!

I really like this, and could totally use it during the dark winter months that lie ahead.&nbsp;<br />
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<sup><sub>Also, please stop reading my mind on project ideas and posting them before me; amazingly</sub></sup><br />
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Really, what were you going to make?

damn these are cute...

Thanks!

This is ... so well made !<br> <br> In addition to all the yarn work, you add electronics to it ! !<br> <br> and then you MODIFY it and add a <strong>magnetic</strong> chirp <strong>switch</strong> ! ! ! .<br> <br> Girl ( or if you like polite Lady ) you are on <strong>Fire ! ! ! !</strong><br> <br> A

Magnetic chirp switch -that makes it sound like I know what I am doing not just <strong>winging</strong> it!